Homegrown terrorism in the West

The London bombings in 2005 led to the perception that the terrorist threat had changed from external to internal. A majority of terrorist plots were now - it was argued - conceived by people who were born and raised in the West. This phenomenon was soon to be conceptualized as “homegrown terrorism”.

In a new article, published in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, senior researcher Manni Crone and consulting analyst Martin Harrow deal with the meaning and scope of this phenomenon.

It appears that the term “homegrown” is ambiguous, since it is both about belonging in the West and autonomy from terrorist groups abroad.

A quantitative study of Islamist terrorism in the West after 1992 reveals an increase in internal as well as autonomous terrorism since 2003. Today most plots against Western targets are conceived by people who belong in the West. Nevertheless only a minority of those plots are strictly autonomous; a majority still have a transnational dimension with international ramifications to militant Islamists abroad.

Link to publication
Manni Crone and Martin Harrow: 'Homegrown terrorism in the West'. Terrorism and and Political Violence, Volume 23, Issue 4, 2011